For me, it’s hands down Flameshot. The best screenshot tool in the world - I’ve got it hooked up to my PrtScrn key for super easy screenshots.
I also love Kwrite as a Notepad++ alternative, and KolourPaint as a MSPaint alternative
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Amberol is probably one of the biggest hidden gems in GNOME apps. It’s a simple easy music player whose background color changes based on the song’s artwork.
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Parabolic is another GNOME app for downloading videos from youtube using yt-dlp. It’s super easy to use and even allows for multiple concurrent downloads.
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mpv is one of those rare moments where using a proprietary implementation is objectively worse. Must install on any personal computer/mobile device.
MPV has automatic native wayland support, VLC doesn’t (yet, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VLC_media_player#Wayland_support)
I haven’t found any other large differences in functionality when it comes to simply playing video (only thing I use either one for).
VLC is also less accurate to the source than mpv is.
See the notice on this wiki that contains some comparisons.
I don’t know the full details but this is a quote I have seen from reddit about VLC:
- uses wrong matrix for RGB conversion (results in wrong colors)
- uses point upscaling for chroma planes
- introduces strong banding
- wrong chroma location (MPEG-1 for everything)
- Old subtitle renderer that in more Typesetting heavy situation will say fuck you
- all the other bugs (including some that haven’t been fixed in years) make it equally unsuitable media player.
It is probably possible to get things in order by digging into the settings in VLC, but mpv prioritizes accuracy by default.
Both are comparable in terms of video playback (both use hardware acceleration and ffmpeg) but mpv’s appeal is that it’s ultimately a minimal (as in lack of apparent GUI) command line tool rather than a fully featured application like VLC. I like mpv because of it’s non-features which is why it’s the backend for a lot of Desktop environment video players.
If you want minimalism I advise you to use a tiling window manager instead of Gnome. If you want Wayland absolutely, use Hyprland.
How does Amberol hold up with libraries in the high thousands? So many nice looking music played keep struggling with my music folders.
Really makes me miss Winamp sometimes.
